John Reilly: Lance Armstrong could be most criminal athlete in U.S. history

John Reilly

Thursday

May 26, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 26, 2011 at 4:48 PM

Before I start, let me just state for the record: I like Lance Armstrong, and I find Tyler Hamilton detestable. But if these accounts hold true and the allegations of trafficking and doping against Armstrong eventually manifest into charges, he may well go down in sports lore as the most criminal athlete in United States history.

Before I start, let me just state for the record: I like Lance Armstrong, and I find Tyler Hamilton detestable.

Hamilton is the Massachusetts-born professional road bike racer who won a gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

He revitalized his 15 minutes of fame this week when he appeared on “60 Minutes” and told journalist Steve Pelley that Armstrong, his cycling teammate from 1999-2001, was a secretive and systematic user of performance-enhancing drugs including EPO, which increased production of the oxygen-carrying red-blood cells when injected. The increased supply of oxygen allows endurance athletes like Armstrong to perform at high levels over an extended period of time.

Hamilton’s career has been littered with doping scandals. He failed his first test at the Athens Olympics when his sample tested positive for the presence of someone else’s red-blood cells. In a demonstration of mind-boggling creativity, he engineered the preposterous story of a “vanishing twin,” a fetus that was absorbed in his mother’s womb … but not before transferring its genetic signature to Hamilton. He was allowed to keep his gold medal.

Hamilton failed another test at the Tour of Spain later that year, and he was unable to conjure a story bizarre enough to either confuse or appease the governing officials, and he was suspended from the tour for two years.

After serving that suspension and becoming national road-race champion in 2008, he was suspended again for a failed drug test in 2009 and banned for eight years, effectively ending his career.

Just this month, Hamilton has admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during the course of his racing career and, in perhaps the highlight of his cycling life, returned his gold medal.

In short, Tyler Hamilton is a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a con, a swindler and a snitch. And I believe him.

Here’s the thing: The evidence is mounting. Too many of Armstrong’s teammates and closest confidants are now coming forward and describing detailed personal accounts of discussing and using performance-enhancing drugs with him.

In addition to Hamilton (Armstrong’s top lieutenant for many years), Floyd Landis and George Hincapie have also cracked the dome of silence surrounding Armstrong. The accounts from Hincapie are especially damaging, considering the fact that he was considered Armstrong’s closest friend and most staunch ally for all seven of Armstrong’s Tour de France wins.

So there are the swelling mountains of evidence, but here’s what I have never been able to reconcile: At one point last year, Bicycling magazine looked at the top 10 finishers in each of the seven Tour de France races that Armstrong has won, which was 70 riders in all.

Of those 70 athletes, 41 have been convicted of or have confessed to doping allegations. French cyclist Philippe Gaumont once claimed that 90 percent of professional riders had used or were currently using performance-enhancing drugs.

And yet we are asked to believe that Armstrong was physically capable, year after year, to beat all of these athletes who carried the terrific and immeasurable advantage of illegal drug use? I don’t buy it.

There is a reason that elite endurance athletes like marathoners and cyclists have a short competitive shelf life. The human body just isn’t designed for the type of stress that is required to compete at an elite level year after year.

Baseball players age, and they don’t hit as many home runs. History has taught us this. Cyclists age, and they don’t win anymore. Yet Armstrong defied all these conventions and dominated in a profession littered with cheaters. It’s simply illogical.

And, if these accounts hold true and the allegations of trafficking and doping against Armstrong eventually manifest into charges, he may well go down in sports lore as the most criminal athlete in United States history. And that will be a very, very sad day.

John Reilly is a graduate of Stonehill College and Notre Dame. A frequent contributor to Wicked Local Sharon, he lives in Sharon, Mass., with his wife, daughter and son.

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